Phaulkon
at Ayudhya: Kowtowing before King Narai, he gestures to signal the French
ambassador to lift his hand so that the king may reach the letter from Louis the
XIV that he is carrying without having to bend.

Ofthe many tales of Western adventurers in the East, none is more fascinating
to the armchair traveler or more frustrating to the modern researcher than the
one that relates the exploits of Constantine Phaulkon. Raffles of Singapore,
Lawrence of Arabia, Gordon of China and Khartoum: all have achieved fame for
their adventures in countries not their own. And yet the incredible career of
Phaulkon – perhaps the boldest and most daring soldier-of-fortune of all – is,
despite recent works of fiction and non-fiction, known outside Thailand mainly
to scholars and academicians.

Many aspects of the life of the Greek who
rose from being cabin boy of an English merchant ship to become practically
master of Siam in the 1680s are only now becoming clear. Yet scholars still
disagree widely over Phaulkon’s character, his beliefs, his goals and his life.

To the British East India Company, any
Englishman who traded in the Orient independently of the Company was an
“interloper.” To the Company, Phaulkon was “a naughty man” and “a wicked
fellow” who encouraged these “interlopers.” To the Christian merchants in
India, he was “one of the biggest imposters even seen in the East.” To his
contemporary, the missionary, Father de Beze, who became his biographer,
Phaulkon was likable, but a “climber” nevertheless. Yet a climber – as de Beze
went on to write the Pope – who was “zealous for the promotion of Christian
religion and of French interests, a stoutfriend of our Order and of Your
Reverence in particular.”

Phaulkon received gifts from Pope
Innocent XI, as well as an autographed letter of thanks from England’s
James II. Louis XIV made his “loving friend” Phaulkon a Count of France and a
Knight of the Order of St. Michael and St. Peter. And to the Jesuits, whose own
aspirations undoubtedly aided his fall, Phaulkon had “high and noble
aspirations.”

In 1690, only two years after Phaulkon’s
death, the seventeenth-century German traveler, Engelbert Kaempfer, arrived in
Siam. He noted that Phaulkon was “a man of a great understanding, of an
agreeable aspect, and an eloquent tongue notwithstanding that he was brought up
to no learning, and had passed his younger years mostly at sea among different
nations, particularly the English, whose language he had leant.”

Constantine Phaulkon entered history at
the Siamese city of Ayudhya which had been founded in 1350 as capital of the
first true Siamese ruler of all Siam. Then known as Iudia (or Judia). It was a
truly cosmopolitan city. To Ayudhya came traders, merchants, diplomats and
adventurers from Japan, China, India, France, England, Spain, Portugal and the
Netherlands – there to buy and sell precious porcelains and silks, tea and
hides, birds’ nests and scented woods. In 1511, when the first European visited
Siam, Ayudhya was a center for the exchange of goods between Persia
and India on the one hand, and China and Japan on the other.

In Phaulkon’s time, English travelers
called Ayudhya “as great a city as London.” In 1688 a French envoy
described the Siamese capital thus: “The City of Siam is not only an island, but
is placed in the middle of several islands, which renders the situation thereof
very singular. The island wherein it is situated is at present all
enclosed with its walls…The City is spacious, considering the circuit of its
walls which enclose the whole isle, but scarce the sixth part thereof is
inhabited, and that to the southeast only. The rest is desert, where
temples only stand. “Tis true that the suburbs, which are possessed by
strangers, do considerably increase the number of people. The streets
thereof are large and straight, and in some places planted with trees, and paved
with bricks laid edge-wise. The houses are low, and built with wood…Most
of the streets are watered with straight canals, which have made Siam
to be compared to Venice….”

From this magnificent capital the Thais
ruled a kingdom that extended southward all the way down the Malay Peninsula to
Tenasserim, on the Andaman
Sea, and Songkhla and that at one time included the seaport of Malacca. Of the
two trade routes that ran out of Ayudhya, one was overland to Tenasserim and the
other to Mergui, on the east coast of the bay of Bengal – at least a ten-day
journey.

Phaulkon built himself a magnificent
residence in Lopburi, 40 miles north of Ayudhya, then known as Louvo (or Lavo).
Lopburi was already an ancient city, which had been occupied by the Mons in the
seventh and eighth centuries, and by the Khmers during the tenth through the
thirteenth century. After 1665 Lopburi became the alternate capital of Siam and
King Narai, Phaulkon’s patron, lived there during the rainy season each year.

Phaulkon was born in 1647, the son of a
small innkeeper at Argonsolian, on Cephalonia, the largest of the Ionian isles
just south of Greece. His family name in modern Greek was Gerakis (or Jerakis),
which means “falcon” in English. he names was re-Hellenized, possibly by his
shipmates, to Phaulkon.

In 1660, when he was 13, Phaulkon left
Cephalonia
in an English ship, possibly to escape the harsh rule of his domineering
father. His travels took him to England, where he rapidly attained fluency in
English, and where he began his Mediterranean voyages on ships of the East India
Company. Around 1679 Phaulkon left ship in India to join George White, an
Englishman who sometimes traded with, and sometimes against, the East India
Company. Phaulkon spent at least on year as a junior clerk at the Englishman’s
factory or trading house at Bantam in Java, where he learned still another
language – Malay.

During an English celebration of the
King’s birthday at Bantam, fire threatened to explode a powder magazine.
Everyone except Phaulkon panicked. By dragging the powder casks from the
vicinity of the flames, Phaulkon saved the factory. For this feat he was
awarded one thousand crowns – money he was, as we shall see – to put to good
use.

In 1672-1674 Phaulkon may have served in
Prince Rupert’s Anglo-French fleet set against the Dutch. In 1678 he traveled
with Richard Burnaby as assistant gunner on a ship sailing from Bantam to Siam.
Burnaby was being dispatched by the Bantam Council to look into the various
misfortunes at the English factory in Siam, which was meeting keen competition
by the Dutch.

Impressed with the skills and personality
of the young Greek, Burnaby arranged for Phaulkon to remain as his personal
servant in Siam. There Phaulkon met George White’s younger brother, Samuel.
(An amazing adventurer in his own right, Samuel is the hero of Maurice Collis’ book, Siamese White.) In 1679 Phaulkon was employed by Burnaby and his
partner, George White, in several trading ventures. White had by this time
sailed to Siam himself and become a pilot on the Menam River. His younger
brother, Samuel, had also arrived and was the captain of a Siamese trading ship.

The most (apocryphal) legends that
describe the beginning of Phaulkon’s amazing rise to power center on his
involvement in the last of three shipwrecks during this period at sea. The
nineteenth-century writer, John Anderson, has described a dream Phaulkon had
after escaping a shipwreck around 1679. In this dream Phaulkon saw a person
“full of majesty looking down on him, and with a smiling countenance uttering
the words, ‘Return, return (to Siam) from whence you came’…On the following day,
while walking by the seaside, he saw a man approaching him, all dripping wet,
and with a sad countenance. This proved to be another castaway like himself –
an ambassador to the King of Siam, who had been wrecked on his way back from
Persia.”

Owing to his engaging personality, his
ability to speak Siamese, and, possibly, his efforts to aid the Ambassador’s
return, Phaulkon was introduced to the Lord of the Treasury (Phra-klang,
romanized into Barcalong). Favorably impressing the Barcalong as well, Phaulkon
was soon made Superintendent of Foreign Trade. From there on, his “force of
personality” and the forces of fate took Phaulkon to the pinnacles of power in
Siam.

Another, undoubtedly more accurate,
version of this story had Phaulkon trying to smuggle weapons and other
contrabands to Siamese rebels in Southern Thailand, to facilitate which he
presented the Barcalong with a gift of about one thousand crowns. Shortly
thereafter, his clandestine voyage forgotten, Phaulkon was appointed adviser to
the Barcalong. (Although this title is translated as “Minister of the
Treasury,” the Barcalong actually collected foreign trade revenue and received
foreign petitions and embassies.)

Did Burnaby and the English merchants
give Phaulkon the money in hopes of installing him in the Siamese service, to
bolster their trading advantages at the expense of the Dutch? Or did Phaulkon,
knowing the value of gifts in Siam, cleverly spend the last of his savings to
risk all for a political end?

We do not know. In any case, Phaulkon
was soon on his way up. There are many tales of how Phaulkon ingratiated
himself with the King of Siam, Narai. The story depicted in a painting at the
Royal Museum at Bangkok is the one most commonly accepted. It is based on the
partially-translated Thai records known as the “Annals of Ayudhya.” The King’s
advisers were unable to determine the weight of a cannon. Phaulkon had the
cannon loaded into a boat, and then marked the waterline. The cannon was then
removed and Phaulkon had measured rice poured into the boat (baskets of bricks
in yet another version) until the waterline dropped to what it was when the
cannon were aboard.

Another story tells of the Siamese
admiration for Phaulkon’s ability, with the aid of an English carpenter, to
raise a large pillar needed to complete the pyramid in which the body of the
queen was to be cremated. Still another tale tells that Phaulkon managed to get
a large ship out of a dock.

Acts such as these may have been
appreciated by the King and, for a time, by the peasants, but one can almost
feel the growing resentment and suspicion of Phaulkon by the Siamese Mandarinate
which was to prove his undoing.

King Narai, who became Phaulkon’s patron,
was a remarkable individual. The French ambassador, Chevalier de Chaumont,
described him admiringly, if also with condescension: “His air is lively, his
disposition regal; he is brave, a great politician, government himself,
magnificent, liberal, loving the fine arts; in a word, he is a prince who, by
the power of his genius, has thrown off many foolish customs anciently kept up
in his kingdom, and has borrowed from foreign nations, and especially from those
of Europe, all that he considers most worthy to contribute to his own glory and
to the happiness of his people.”

To Phaulkon’s secretary, the Jesuit
Father Tachard, “The King is below average height, but very straight and well
set up. His demeanor is attractive, and his manners full of gentleness and
kindness. He is lively and active, and an enemy of sloth. He is always either
in the forest hunting elephants, or in his palace, attending to State affairs.
He is not fond of war, but when forced to take up the sword, no Eastern monarch
has a stronger passion for glory.”

The King moved in an atmosphere of
ritualistic secrecy and holy dread. The only class that had access to him was
the ruling Mandarin class. Of this atmosphere Phaulkon remarked, “It is
not the custom among the Siamese to ask such questions, it not being
permitted for them to inform themselves regarding the health of the King their
master, whose correct name most do not know, and when they do know it dare not
pronounce it….”

Even a mandarin preceded every
conversation with the King thus:
“High and Mighty Lord of me they slave, I desire to take thy Royal Word, and put
it on my brain, and on the top of me they slave…”

To assure that the King was at all times
elevated above his subjects, no houses outside the palace could be built more
than one story high. Even the floor levels with the palace were such that there
was no chance for a subject to rise above the King.

Whenever the King traveled outside the
palace, the subjects, upon hearing the fifes and drums of his entourage, retired
behind a hedge of canes to ensure that no one inside should look upon him,
closed all doors and windows, and dared not utter a word until he passed. Even
to point to an article used by the King could result in the loss of the
offending finger.

The method in which the King might
converse with those below him or with foreigners lacking high positions was for
him “accidentally” to meet such individuals while riding on his elephant. An
interpreter would then inform a mandarin of the message, and this in turn would
be ceremoniously given to the King. As in other Asian countries, even the most
absolute king needed a ruse to sidestep custom. It was into this world of
exotic ceremony and absolute power that the Greek adventurer would not only
enter but would also to a great extent irrevocably alter.

Phaulkon’s rise was based not only on a
remarkable personality, but on his (often justified) confidence that whatever he
set his mind to, he could carry out. He soon proved his worth as a trader to
the Siamese crown. In 1680 he completed a mission to Persia for both the
Barcalong and the King. But it was against the power of the Dutch and Muslim
traders, so amply and – to King Narai – so ominously, displayed in Indonesia,
that Phaulkon would have to prove his mettle. For even more than the protracted
conflicts with the Burmese in Chiengmai in Northern Thailand, it was the Dutch
military blockade of the mouth of the Menam River in 1644 and their resultant
economic strength in Siam
that most alarmed the King of Siam.

Hard facts detailing how Phaulkon became
King Narai’s favorite are scanty, but it is known that King Narai was becoming
increasingly anxious to find a Western ally to use as a countervailing force
against the Dutch. He may have hoped that the “Young Greek” could aid him in
his search. It is also known that both Phaulkon and Kong Narai preferred
English support to any other. But this British support was not forthcoming.
Burnaby’s colleague, Potts, intensely disliked Phaulkon, and Potts eventually
defeated Burnaby in their complex quarrels over control of the Company.

Phaulkon’s precarious loyalty to the
English wavered still more after a young French commercial agent, who arrived in
Ayudhya early in 1682, began a campaign to enlist Phaulkon in the service of
France. In December of that year a fire destroyed a large portion of the
English factory at Ayudhya. Potts let it be known that he thought Phaulkon
responsible for the conflagration. A year later, the English finally closed
down the entire factory. Into this vacuum the French now moved.

The French willingness to enter the scene
was based less on a strategy of expansion than on the assumption that anyone so
anathema to the English as Phaulkon was or could be made into a loyal friend of
France.

The French vehicle for intervention in
Siam was the Societe des Missions Estrangers. Founded in Paris in 1659,
with the blessing of Louis XIV, it was intended to do missionary work in the
East independently of the Jesuits. The Society’s Bishop Lambert de la Motte had
intended to proselyte in Annam,
Indochina. Finding the tolerant
religious climate of Ayudhya congenial, he settled instead in the Siamese
capital.

In January 1664 Bishop de la Motte was
joined by Pallu, Bishop of Heliopolis. The two hierarchs secured permission to
build a church and seminary. Soon their priests were dispensed all over the
various portions of Siam, and the two bishops’ accounts that reached the Court
of Versailles described in glowing terms the possibilities of converting all of Siam
to Christianity.

When Monsignor Pallu returned from Europe
to Siam in 1673, he carried with him a personal letter from the Roi Soleil
to King Narai. The Siamese monarch’s reception of the message emboldened bishop
Pallu and Lambert to suggest that a Siamese diplomatic mission be sent to the
French court. The King agreed. A Siamese embassy was therefore prepared,
consisting of three ambassadors with a retinue of 30. A letter from King Narai
to Louis XIV was composed and inscribed on a sheet of gold. The presents for
the French King and his family included young elephants and rhinoceros.

On Christmas Day, 1680, the embassy set
sail for Bantam in Java, where the ambassadors and their gifts were transferred
to an ocean-going ship, the 1,000-tonner, Soleil d’Orient. The ship
reached Mauritius, then was caught in a gale off the east coast of Madagascar.
All aboard were lost, including the young elephants.

In 1682 Phaulkon took two fateful steps
that were to alter his own fate as well as that of Siam. First, he made himself
the indispensable interpreter between the King and the Bishop of Heliopolis.
Shortly thereafter, fate offered him his opportunity, and he seized it with both
hands. The old Barcelong died, and the new one, incompetent and uncertain of
himself, began to rely more and more on Phaulkon.

Also in that year, in Ayudhya, Phaulkon
had married a girl believed to have been Japanese or of Japanese-Portuguese
extraction. As a convert to Catholicism, she was heavily influenced by the
Portuguese, in whose quarter of Ayudhya she had been reared. While her husband
lived, she was treated as the wife of a mandarin, and along with the other wives
of nobility, was part of the royal audience of King Narai’s daughter.

Phaulkon, now in charge of the
Barcalong’s office in fact, if not in form, soon persuaded the King to prepare
another embassy to Versailles. This second embassy, dispatched in January,
1684, was more fortunate that the first. At Versailles Louis XIV assured the
Siamese ambassadors that he would “do for the King of Siam, my brother, always
with much pleasure, all that he will desire of me.” If the “Most Christian
King” was delighted to receive a Siamese delegation, he must have been equally
pleased to learn that Phaulkon himself had embraced Roman Catholicism. The
envoys stressed the conversion of Phaulkon, while minimizing King Narai’s
steadfast resistance to conversion.

In the face of these less than complete
reports, it was now the “Sun King’s” turn to become enthus4ed. He dispatched
the religious fanatic, the Chevalier de Chaumont, as ambassador to Siam with
several missionaries who, it was hoped, would succeed in converting the King of
Siam to Catholicism. The life of one of these missionaries, the Abbe de Choisy,
is to be found in several treatises on sexual aberrations, for the abbe as a
notorious female impersonator.

It was, then, a somewhat incongruous
French embassy that, after a 204-day journey, arrived in Siam in October of
1685. Still, it received a magnificent reception from King Narai who, like
Phaulkon, believed it to signify the beginning of an alliance against the
Dutch. A magnificent royal barge with 60 elaborately-dressed oarsmen received
Louis XIV’s letter and rowed it to Ayudhya, where it was placed on a gold
palanquin for delivery to King Narai, the folk on the bearers’ path prostrating
themselves as before their royal master.

For a time, the French embassy seemed to
augur an alliance that would result in Siam’s emergence as the dominant power in
Southeast Asia. Although King Narai ordered Phaulkon, by now his interpreter,
to inform de Chaumont that “no (Siamese) king had ever been known to adopt a new
faith which had no following amongst his subjects,” rumors that Islamic
ambassadors from Persia were competing for King Narai’s soul spurred the French
to greater efforts.

In fact the Greek adventurer, now Siamese
peer with the title of Luang Wichayen, was actively arranging with the
Jesuit Pere Tachard to persuade Louis XIV to send Jesuits dressed as laymen to
Siam. Once in the Kingdom, they would be appointed governors of all the
important towns, fortresses and provinces. Through them Siam’s conversion to
Christianity would begin. After Phaulkon had enumerated the many concessions he
was offering the French, he maneuvered de Chaumont into publicly announcing the
Siamese-French alliance.

In June 1686 the French ambassador,
Tachard, and Kosa Pan, the representative of the Court of Ayudhya, were received
regally in the Gallery of Mirrors at Versailles. But despite his fine
reception, Kosa Pan refused to allow the French the use of the port of Mergui as
a depot for shipbuilding and repairs. The Siamese dignitary would also have
opposed the French dispatch of troops to Bangkok – had he known of Pere
Tachard’s secret plan.

In September 1687 six French warships
with 636 soldiers and 300 technicians under Marshal Desfarge’s command arrived
at Ayudhya. Also aboard were two French plenipotentiaries, as well as Kosa Pan
and Pere Tachard and some Jesuits. Pere Tachard’s task was to ensure that a
French governor and a garrison should be posted at Mergui and that Bangkok
should be occupied – by force if need be.

It is during this crucial period in
Franco-Siamese relations that his critics accuse Phaulkon the statesman of
reverting to his old role of adventurer. But events were moving fast, and
Phaulkon improvised brilliantly. First, Phaulkon placated King Narai by having
Desfarges and his troops take an oath of allegiance to the King. Then he
consented to the execution of the French plan. French troops occupied Bangkok
and other troops were dispatched to Mergui. A Franco-Siamese treaty was then
signed which gave the French privileges that included the cession of all islands
within the ten-mile radius of Mergui. But there was still no formal alliance,
nor a conversion of King Narai. And as the second French mission returned home,
the opportunity for either event taking place in Siam was rapidly passing.

Phaulkon’s intrigues to secure the French
ascendancy, and the prosperity of his English friends, soon incurred the wrath
of the English based in Madras. The governor of Madras during this period was
Elihu Yale, who laws later to perpetuate his name in American Academe, by
selling a cargo of books and East Indian goods in Boston on behalf of a school
in New Haven, Connecticut. The sale brought the school £562 and 12 shillings.
Suitably grateful, the trustees named the school Yale University.

That is by the way: Yale was an
implacable enemy of Phaulkon and Phaulkon’s protégé, the Englishman, Samuel
White, who with his partner, Burnaby, was now operating out of Mergui port.
White was carrying on a private war against rival traders in the Bay of Bengal,
and his pinprick attacks eventually prodded the English in Madras to act. In
June 1687 two English warships sailed into Mergui. The aroused Siamese attacked
the English factory on shore, killing 50 of them. Burnaby was among those
killed, but White himself escaped to England. From Madras, Governor Yale sent a
frigate to help the warships seize Mergui port. The frigate docked to find the
French in possession, and had to surrender to them. Yale seethed in impotent
anger, but soon resigned himself to waiting for Phaulkon, by this time deeply
immersed in intrigue, to weave himself enough rope.

At this juncture, with the East India
Company in a veritable state of war with Siam, the two French religiou8s groups
at Ayudhya irreconcilably at odds, and the Siamese mandarinate increasingly
incensed at Phaulkon’s temerity, King Narai fell ill with dropsy. And the
adventurous Phaulkon swooped to seize the opportunity.

Now Phaulkon, still under 40, was the
undisputed master of Siam. Kaempfer wrote that Phaulkon “was put at the head of
the Finance of the Kingdom, and had also the direction of the King’s household;
almost all public affairs of the most important concern were determined by his
advice, and whoever had anything to solicit, was obliged to apply to him.”

Even the King’s daughter was unable to
prevent Phaulkon from impressing two thousand men from her territories for a war
with Cambodia. Phaulkon also showed power and ruthlessness in dealing with a
rebellion of Muslim Macassars. After escaping death while leading royalist
forces, he commanded the torture of his captured enemies.

It was now Phaulkon whom cringing
petitioners approached on all fours. It was Phaulkon who directed and
controlled state trading and it was Phaulkon, rather than the Barcalong, who
received French embassies on behalf of the King. And, ominously, it was
Phaulkon who incurred the rising resentment of the court mandarins, as well as
the English, and the Dutch.

Already, one of these mandarins, Luang
Sorasak, incensed at the young Greek’s attempts to lure Buddhist monks out of
their monasteries into his employ, had physically assaulted Phaulkon. Lacking
the King’s backing, Phaulkon could do little to punish the mandarin. Indeed,
the King remarked to de Chaumont that if he should die, Phaulkon might find it
prudent to retire to France.

The mandarins also watched Phaulkon’s
relentless usurpation of power – at first with incredulity, then with suspicion
and, finally, with loathing. They were well aware of the attempts made to
convert their King to Catholicism. They could sense Phaulkon’s intrigues with
the Jesuits to establish Christianity in Siam. And they knew, as they watched
the arrival of French troops, technicians, and even warships, that if the trend
continued, still more of their ancient prerogatives would have to go. In May
1688 their hatred crystallized into conspiracy, under the leadership of Phra
Phetraja, the general in charge of the royal elephants.

The rumors started to circulate that
Phaulkon, the King’s son-in-law, and the French were engaged in a plot to seize
the throne the moment King Narai died. Phra Phetraja’s own son, while with two
of the King’s concubines within the palace, swore that he had heard the
conspirators plotting. His father acted immediately.

Phaulkon was lured to the Palace under
the pretense that the King needed him. Stilling his own suspicions, he went.
At the Palace gate the trap was sprung. Phaulkon’s bodyguards were disarmed.
Phaulkon himself was thrown into prison, where he endured two weeks of torture.
What occupied his thoughts as he was carried off on a common chair to his
unknown fate we will never know. Kaempfer’s account tells us that “soon after
his Silver Chair, wherein he was usually carried, came back empty, a bad omen to
his friends and domestics, who cold not but prepare themselves to partake in the
master’s misfortune….Two days after, (Phra Phetraja) ordered, against the King’s
will, the King’s son-in-law’s head to be struck off, throwing it at Phaulkon’s
feet, then loaded with irons, with this reproach, ‘See, there is your king’.”

The hopeless Phaulkon was then carried
out of town to the woods outside of Lopburi. There, by the banks of a natural
lake known as Tale Chupsorn, his head was severed with a broad sword. His body,
only poorly covered by dirt, was left to be devoured by scavenging dogs.

Father de Beze describes Phaulkon’s
execution in early June 1688: “At ten o’clock an official called for him and
carried him across the city on an elephant to the place assigned by Phetraja.
He told us that M. Constance, on arriving there, fell upon his knees and
remained in prayer for some time. He then protested his innocence, and handed
over to the official his cross of St. Michael, which was to be preserved in
token of the affection shown to him by the King of France, and was to be
delivered to his son, as soon as the latter should be in a position to have it.”

According to Kaempfer, the gift to his
son “could be of no great use to the poor child, who to this day with his mother
goes begging from door to door, nobody daring to intercede for them.”

Shortly afterward, the King’s two
brothers were themselves placed in red, velvet bags and beaten with sandalwood
clubs, to avoid the shedding of royal blood. King Narai himself died soon
afterward, on July 11, 1688. Few of Phaulkon’s French friends were in a
position to attempt to intercede on his behalf. The few who were, did not.
Fortified at Bangkok, a small, unimportant fortress and village site, against
the wrath of the Siamese, the French troops could do nothing to aid Phaulkon.

In September Desfarges and his troops,
whose behavior at Bangkok had done little to encourage friendship with the
Siamese, were evacuated to Pondicherry, where the troops that had occupied
Mergui had fled to also, after fighting their way out of the port. Siamese
xenophobia, which spread throughout the kingdom, especially at Ayudhya, cost the
lives of many French civilians and soldiers. Only a handful of Dutch traders
and French Catholics now remained in the kingdom.

After Phaulkon’s death, Lady Phaulkon
seems to have been kept as a captive and then left to fend for herself as best
she could. Known to Europeans as Lady Phaulkon, she was employed in the Siamese
palace as late as 1724. The Thais called her by a phonetic approximation of her
real name, Thao Thong Keep Ma, or “Dame Golden Horseshow.” She was made
Controller of the Royal Confectionery, and until today certain Thai dishes –
such as kanom foy tong and kanom tong yot, consisting of golden
sweet shreds or drops of egg yolk boiled in sugar syrup and drained – greatly
resemble Portuguese delicacies that Lady Phaulkon popularized in Siam over 280
years ago.

If events of his life are difficult to
verify, the motivations of the man are even more shrouded in mystery. Phaulkon
can still be seen as a high-handed opportunist with loyalties to no one but
himself, or he can be considered as a man with too many conflicting loyalties
and too few real friends. In an extract from the Memoires du Comte De Forbin,
Amsterdam, 1729 edition, we are told that “Phaulkon’s capacity was above the
average. No plan was to great for him to guide it to a successful conclusion
with wisdom and circumspection. He would indeed have been fortunate if these
qualities had not been marred by the most conspicuous defects, of which the
chief were boundless ambition, insatiable and often sordid avarice, a jealousy
which took offense at trifles and led him to be hard, cruel, and devoid of both
pity and honesty.”

The once-magnificent capital of Ayudhya,
which had flourished since its founding in1350, was completely destroyed by the
Burmese in 1767; Lopburi, the “Versailles” of Siam, rapidly declined into a
small market town known chiefly for its ruins of empires.

In 1782 Bangkok was made capital of the
country, which it remains today. It was not until the reign of King Mongkut
(1851-1868), the fourth king of the Chakri dynasty, that a Siamese ruler again
expressed interest in the world beyond the Siamese borders. And only in 1896
did another foreigner, this time a Belgian adviser to King Chulalongkorn, obtain
high rank of nobility approximating that which Phaulkon had attained.

Letters from missionaries and the records
of travelers of the period and after enable the latter-day historian to trace,
with some accuracy, the descendants of Phaulkon until 1767. His son was
believed to have entered the government service in Ayudhya, and a granddaughter
of Phaulkon was said to have been among the captives sold by the Burmese when
they retook Rangoon from the Mon mutineers in 1773.

Photos above: Ruins of Phaulkon's house. Phaulkon was
the first to use brick and mortar in Thailand for his palatial home in Lopburi.
One of the entrances to King Narai's palace at Lopburi. Painting: Western
ambassadors and missionaries depicted in lacquerware on the wall of the Lacquer
Pavilion in Bangkok date back to the Narai era. Various temple ruins of
Ayudhya.